Service Learning Day

Interesting day of school today. Interesting because I'm using the phrase "day of school" loosely.

At Bishop Kelly Catholic High School, we're asked to put in 'service hours', or time volunteering for various projects for homeless and sick and elderly and anything else. Like coaching for a Special Olympics Team, or helping out at the local shelter. Stuff like that.

And one day a year, we have Service Learning Day, where the whole school goes with their first period class to wherever they need to go to do service. So we have everyone going different directions. One class to the park, one class to the Greenbelt, one class to a suburban neighborhood, one class to BK, etc.

We went to the suburban neighborhood I mentioned. We did some yardwork for some elderly people who weren't able to clean up their yards anymore. In retrospect, it was some pretty light work, and we all found that we were overequipped with rakes. We would've gotten by with two but we had thirty.

Interesting bit from that, at one of the houses we went to, we found a wheelbarrow full of half-frozen rotting leaf-water. The smell would've knocked out most people in the immediate vicinity, but I've got a really bad nose. So I got stuck with getting rid of it. And boy did it stink!

So I pulled it out of the side of the houses' garage and up front to the street. Now wait, how the hell was I going to get rid of it? I know! Use the street sewer! "Hey Mark! Help me lift this manhole cover off!" And we lifted it up and dumped the disgusting concoction down the sewer.

While this was fun, I'm pretty sure it was illegal. Which makes it more fun. But it was a good day and we got to do some good work.